How to handle an asynchronous request/response as part of a Gitlab CI/CD test - gitlab-ci

Question

I am looking to migrate from Jenkins to GitLab CI/CD. We currently use the BlazeMeter plugin for Jenkins to run GUI Functional tests on Blazemeter as part of a Jenkins job.
Unfortunately BlazeMeter doesn't have a plugin for GitLab but they do have a simple JSON API to start tests.
Because the tests can be long-running the Blazemeter API is asynchronous. One cUrl endpoint is used to start a test and another is used to poll and get the results (passing an ID returned in the first call).
What is the best way to handle this asynchronous process as part of a GitLab CI Pipeline job and what is the sample gitlab yaml?

Answer 1

GitLab has webhook or pipeline trigger feature where you can invoke from where ever you want. Also blazemeter has notification via webhooks. By combining these two will solve your problem without having long running one job until test completion.
test-trigger:
stage: test
script:
- # curl command to invoke test
except:
- triggers
test-completion:
stage: test
script:
- # reporting script
only:
- triggers
Following resources will help you to get started.
https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/triggers/
https://guide.blazemeter.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001859058-Notifications-Overview-Notifications-Overview#webhook
https://blog.runscope.com/posts/how-to-send-runscope-webhook-notifications-to-google-hangouts-chat-with-eventn

Answer 2

The general solution is to use a shell/cmd script to manage loops for gitlab-ci.
build:
stage: runBlazeMeter
script:
- echo "START test run"
echo "use curl to initiate test"
COUNT=0
while
COUNT=$((COUNT + 1))
echo "use curl to query test completion"
RES=$(curl --silent https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/users/${COUNT} | wc -c)
[ $RES -gt 3 ]
do :; done
echo "END test run"

Answer 3

You can use two stages to achieve this by using artifacts to copy the ID from one stage to the next
start-test:
stage: test
artifacts:
untracked: true
script:
- curl http://run/the/test > testid.json
test:
stage: test
dependencies:
- start-test
script:
- TESTID=`cat testid.json`
while
sleep 1000
RES=$(curl https://test/status/${TESTID} | grep "COMPLETE")
[ $RES -gt 0 ]
do :; done
echo "TEST COMPLETE"